Sherlock Meta

A ticket to hell - Or: The Holmes Brother’s strange communication code

(Sherlock meta by thenorwoodbuilder)

Hallo dear!

Thank you for your kind words and welcome, welcome, WELCOME in this madhouse the fandom!!!!!
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I must admit that I’ve never considered before the ways in which the flight ticket Mycroft sends to Sherlock in ASiB might be interpreted, and this opens a whole new series of interesting perspectives! So, a special thanks for asking!
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I must preliminary say that I don’t think Sherlock was ever meant to be registered as dead in the explosion, anyway. And this mainly for two reasons - one, we might say, logical, and another psychological, which I’ll soon proceed to state.
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Nonetheless, I’m persuaded that Mycroft’s choice to “invite” Sherlock on the plane by sending him the ticket possesses a whole set of interesting meanings, one of them understandable from an out-universe perspective, while the others more deeply related to the nature of the relationship between the Holmes Brothers.
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So, you can see that you have just got me started on a VERY dangerous topic! ;-)

So, first question first: did Mycroft mean to have Sherlock listed as “death” in the explosion of the 6.30 to Baltimore?

I think that, to this question, the only possible answer is “no”:

1) For a logical and chronological (we might say) reason:

By the time Mycroft sends Sherlock the flight ticket (which, by the way, could as well have been a simple fake, a forged ticket with no correspondence in the passenger list of the boeing…), he already knows that the Bond Air is never going to fly. He has known that the flight could no more be launched and blown up mid-air, simulating a terrorist attack, since the moment he received Moriarty’s text and understood its meaning. Once the terrorists knew about the trick, the whole operation became instantly useless, and was thus cancelled, as Mycroft clearly says to Sherlock once on the airplane.
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Thus, it is logically impossible that Mycroft ever conceived to fake Sherlock’s death (and to what purpose, then? to held him captive, to make him disappear, to deliver him to the CIA? I can’t see him doing any of this - but I’ll come back to this question in a few moments…) by putting him in the passenger list of the 6.30 flight to Baltimore, for the simple reason that the flight and related explosion had already been un-scheduled by the time he sent the ticket to Sherlock. This reason would, by itself, being absorbing. And yet, as I really LOVE to ramble about the Holmes Brothers, let’s just for a moment consider it not enough, and briefly mention the 2) psychological reason why Mycroft would never have conceived such a plan:

First of all, we have to ask ourselves which reasons Mycroft could have for staging his brother’s fake death by placing him in the boeing’s passenger list and then have him believed death in the ensuing explosion.
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In the worst scenario, Mycroft could decide to do such a thing in order to make Sherlock conveniently disappear and then held him captive under the British Secret Service’s or the CIA’s custody. This either as a way of punishment, or to get rid of a brother who had become much of a nuisance - or both.
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But even in the best scenario, Mycroft’s only other possible reason to follow such a peculiar course of action could only be to save Sherlock from the wrath of his superiors and of the CIA, but in a way more suitable to redeem himself in front of his master’s eyes (presumably as a man so committed to raison d’état as to be capable of sending to death is own brother to punish him for his catastrophic “intereference”), than to be truly beneficial to Sherlock (who would have had to be uprooted from his whole life and, presumably, forever prevented from practicing as a consulting detective - a work which, we know, Sherlock helds dearer than his own life).
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Now, does any of these explanations sound really plausible, really in-character for Mycroft? I don’t think so. After all, in this very episode we see how Mycroft is ready to put his neck on the block to try and protect his little brother.

As I’ve already had - even recently - occasion to mention, Mycroft’s ONLY REAL reason to surrender to Irene’s requests, in ASiB, is to shield Sherlock from the consequences of his mistake.
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The Bond Air Project had already crumbled into pieces, and nothing Mycroft (or Sherlock) could do would have suceeded in “resuscitating” it. Irene threatened to divulge the compromising information she kept stored in her phone, yes, but Irene had just voluntarily placed herself in Mycroft’s power, so that he could have easily avoided such an occurrence by helding her captive - even making her quietly disappear - and destroying the wretched device. So WHY was Mycroft ready to agree to her conditions? Especially considering that this would have made him appear to his “masters” as a man who not only had failed them in the Bond Air Affair, but who had then let go the very woman responsible for such a debacle, and even paid her a queen’s ransom (with public resources) just to obtain some intelligence he coud at least have tried to force out of her… At the very minimum, this would have destroyed Mycroft’s career forever.
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Now, the only possible explanation for Mycroft’s peculiar conduct is that he was ready to risk everything just to have a chance to let Sherlock out the whole wretched business. And to achieve this result he desperately needed Ms. Adler out of reach for both his superiors and the CIA: till that moment, in fact, they might SUSPECT Sherlock’s involvement in the decoding of the MoD man’s e-mail, but had NO PROOF of it; but, had Irene been interrogated or, worst, publicly prosecuted, Sherlock would have been irreparably exposed. Mycroft needed to get rid of her (and we have seen he is not actually prepared to dispose in cold blood of other human beings…), and at the same time to have a plausible explanation for having decided to let her go: hence his agreement to Ms. Adler’s conditions, in order to - at least - set his hands on the contents of her camera-phone.
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But, had not Sherlock cracked Irene’s phone at the last moment, Mycroft would certainly have had to face most unpleasant consequences, for his decision.
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Now, could we really think that a man willing to risk so much to save his own little brother, could have been capable of conceiving a plan to get rid of him just a few hours before? As I said, I don’t think so…
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Of course, a completely different question is what SHERLOCK thought when he received the flight ticket: did HE thought that his brother was actually going to place him in the passenger list of the Bond Air - or, maybe, even to place him on the plane - and make him disappear?

As you correctly point out, at this stage Sherlock is fully persuaded that the Government - and Mycroft - is going to allow an ACTUAL carnage to occur, just to prevent the terrorists from discovering that the Services have a way to know their plans beforehand. Thus, as I’ve already noticed, Sherlock is, till now, fully persuaded that his brother could be capable of planning in cold blood the annihilation of tens of innocent people just to keep a secret, just out of the “superior” interest of the Nation. He apparently considers Mycroft a sort of amoral Richelieu, or at least a man so committed to raison d’état as to consider the lives of “a few” innocent people “expendable”. Which, of course, Mycroft is NOT.

By the way, this also suggests to me that Sherlock probably got out of this episode with a far better understanding - as well as a better opinion - of his elder brother, on the whole. After all, not being an idiot, by the end of the episode he must have realized not only how much Mycroft was ready to sacrifice to protect him, but also that his elder brother was not at all as cold and unscrupolous, even in dealing with State businesses, as he had pictured him to be. Possibly for the first time, Sherlock really grasped the true reasons behind Mycroft’s choice of his job, and had to aknowledge that, maybe, his brother was a better person than he had always given him credit to be... Anyway, when he receives the ticket, Sherlock certainly has no suspect of what was Mycroft’s real plan, so that he could as well have legitimately questioned his brother’s reasons to summon him in that peculiar way.
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I think that only two possible explanations could have occurred to him: a) that he had managed to get Mycroft so enraged, that his brother had actually conceived to lure him into a trap and make him disappear as one of the passengers of the Bond Air; or b) that his brother had chosen that peculiar way to summon him just because he needed to be sure to immediately get his attention and to persuade him to come and see him without further childish tantrums on his part.
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Now, I’ll explain in the second part of this post why I think that Mycroft actually sent Sherlock the ticket because of the reason I stated under b), but, right now, I’m taking a few moments more just to explain why I can’t believe that Sherlock could ever - not even for a single moment - have seriously considered the hypothesis sub a).
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Through the whole series - and since its very beginning - we see that, no matter how strained their relationship, no matter how many “old scores, resentments”, no matter how generally “dangerous” Sherlock considers Mycroft to be, he never really thinks his brother capable of WILLINGLY hurt or harm him. He considers Mycroft a meddling and cumbersome “mother hen” (thus, a TOO protective elder brother, if anything), he - for some reason - dislikes (and even, to some extent, despises) his work, he can’t let go a single occasion to annoy and/or challenge him, and yet, at the end of the day, he not only perfectly knows that Mycroft “is not his problem” (ASiP), but also that his brother is still the only person capable of fully understanding him (ASiB), and that Mycroft would, in the end, yield to any request (even the most unreasonable ones: THoB) of his.
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For all this reasons, I don’t think that, even if Sherlock believed the Bond Air really doomed to explode mid-air, he could ever have considered the ticket sent to him as a hint that Mycroft had something sinister in store for him…
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And so we have come to the second part of this post, and to the second question: why did Mycroft send that flight ticket as a way to summon Sherlock after having learned that his Bond Air Project had just crumbled?
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As I said above, we can find both one out-universe reason, and some in-universe reasons, for this choice.
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Let’s start from the out-universe explanation, that is (basically), a quote:

As the whole ASiB episode is based more on Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes than on the Canon itself, it’s not so surprising that even Mycroft’s summon to Sherlock in ASiB echoes in some way Mycroft’s invitation to his brother in PrivL.
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What I mean is that the flight ticket sent by Mycroft as a way to persuade Sherlock to follow his men, and to go and meet him on board of the airplane, in ASiB, is, in a way, the modern equivalent of the champagne bottle PrivL Mycroft sends to his brother, to be delivered by him to the Scottish castle where the secret submarine he has vainly tried to conceal to Sherlock is going to be launched (and actually sabotaged, in order to limit the damages PrivL Sherlock had caused with his meddling). PrivL Mycroft and PrivL Sherlock, in the ensuing scene, have a confrontation similar, under many respects, to the one modern Mycroft and Sherlock have on board of the plane; and, as in ASiB Mycroft reveals to Sherlock how Irene has tricked him into severely compromising national security, so in PrivL Mycroft explains to Sherlock that his client, the woman he got infatuated with, is actually Ilde von Hofmannsthal, a renown German spy.

Besides this eagerness, on the writers’ part, to quote once more one of their favourite holmesian adaptations, other reasons - in-universe reasons - can be found to explain the sending of the ticket in ASiB, according to me.

I) Mycroft is going to reprimand his brother, to force him to face his naivety and the massive damage he has just caused because of his childish eagerness to show off in front of a woman who has fooled him completely, and yet he doesn’t want to humiliate him.

This is certainly evident (as I wrote somewhere else - even if, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember where, right now…) in Mycroft’s choice to confront his brother in the privacy of the plane, instead than in front of anybody. When Mycroft reproaches Sherlock, in fact, they are alone on the plane; while, when he apologizes to him, he doesn’t mind to do so in front of Irene.
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But I think that his choice to send a flight ticket to Sherlock, as a way to summon him, is also meant as a sort of - bitter, but sincere - hommage to his cleverness in discovering the meaning of the e-mail and the nature of the Bond Air Project. When Mycroft realizes that Sherlock has understood the meaning of the e-mail (and revealed it to Irene), he also realizes that it can’t take long before his brother also makes the right connection between the 6.30 flight to Baltimore and the “Bond Air” he carelessly mentioned in front of him. Thus, by sending him the ticket, he is actually sending him a sort of compliment, in that bizarre, devious holmesian way of theirs: “Congratulations, brother, I know that you know about my plan, and I aknowledge that you have been brilliant in uncovering it. I’m sure you’ll also immediately grasp the meaning of this flight ticket I’m sending you, so come at once, we need to talk”.
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Mycroft doesn’t think that Sherlock is - or has become - an idiot, just because he has allowed himself to be deceived by Irene. He knows - and wants Sherlock to know - that it was not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of maturity, on his part, what made him fall into Irene’s trap.

II) Mycroft wants Sherlock to grasp exactly how deathly a danger he is in as a result of his recklesness and naivety.

In this meaning, the sending of the ticket must be read together with the words Neilson (the CIA agent) addresses to Sherlock just before he boards the airplane:

As I’ve written above, Mycroft knows that the Americans not only are furious against Sherlock for all the hindrances he has posed to their plans through the whole development of the case, but also because, right now, they have plenty of reasons to suspect Sherlock’s direct involvement in whatever mishap caused the Bond Air Project to be cancelled, as well as the ensuing loss of their advantage in predicting the terrorists’ moves. Thus, Mycroft also knows - and want his brother to know - that the CIA men’s first inclination, should their suspicions ever get confirmed, would be to dispose of him in a quiet and clean way - for instance, with a good bullet in his head and the official ascription of his death to the airplane crash… Thus, Mycroft’s choice of sending the flight ticket to Sherlock probably has a further subtext: “So, brother dear, as you will soon realize, you have made a giant mess, and one which might as well cost you your life. Should I not employ all my influence and all my skills on your behalf, our American friends would be even too eager to put you on the same plane which is intended to blow up in a few hours, and to dispose of you as they are going to dispose of all the corpses which are already stowed in it… I hope you’ll soon realize in what deadly danger you’ve managed to put yourself, and learn the lesson”.
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Mind you, I don’t mean that it’s MYCROFT’S intention to threaten Sherlock - and thus that the flight ticket is his version of the horse’s head in the bed - but only that Mycroft wants to convey to Sherlock an effective impression of the deathly danger (a danger posed by the CIA men, over whom Mycroft has only partial control) he has just been courting all the time, since the moment he chose to ignore his elder brother’s warning to stay out of the case.

III) Finally, as I mentioned above, sending the flight ticket was, for Mycroft, the safest and most practical way to summon his brother without risking any further stubborn refusal or childish tantrum on his part.

As we all know - and Mycroft knows even better - Sherlock doesn’t usually eagerly and immediately comply with Mycroft’s summons and requests. But this time Mycroft really doesn’t have the time for their usual “power plays”. He can’t afford to have Sherlock stubbornly refusing to see him, because what he needs to discuss with his younger brother is of the greatest urgency, and they need to find some way out from the big mess Sherlock has placed himself (and both of them) into as soon as possible, before the Americans take charge and Mycroft’s hand are completely tied. Thus Mycroft sends Sherlock what could also be read - and is read by Sherlock - as a sign of capitulation, because he is clever enough to know that now it is not really the time to antagonize his little brother, and that Sherlock will more easily come and meet him if he’s offered the possiblity to gloat over his elder brother. Thus, the final subtex we can read in Mycroft’s act of sending the flight ticket, is, more or less: “All right, brother, I concede defeat. You managed to meddle into my business and to discover my secrets, I’m ready to aknowledge that you’ve beaten me, this time. Just come and meet me, and you’ll have your way”.
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Which, of course, is not at all what actually happened (Sherlock has NOT defeated Mycroft: he has helped IRENE and Moriarty to defeat him…), nor what was going to happen. But the important thing, for Mycroft, right now, was that Sherlock believed it, and behave accordigly, yielding to his summon. Which he, in fact, DID.